


Night Watch

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28369047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Clarke, driven from her tent by nightmares, and Bellamy, just off his patrol shift, run into each other by the fire pit.He invites her back to his tent.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 14
Kudos: 59
Collections: Bellarke Secret Santa 2020





	Night Watch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [writetheniteaway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writetheniteaway/gifts).



> Happy Holidays to my Bellarke Secret Santa recipient, writetheniteaway!
> 
> For the prompt: "Clarke or Bellamy wake up from a horrible nightmare and the other stays up with them until they can fall back asleep."
> 
> Set somewhere in S1... sometime post 1x04 but probably pre-Day Trip, roughly.

Nightmares are not re-creations. Clarke does not find herself, trapped in this dreamworld, reliving the worst moments of her life, but instead in a funhouse-mirror landscape of terror and deceit. Faceless figures stalk her. Behind every door, the oblivion of space. Everyone she encounters is a liar or a ghost, hiding behind inscrutable, shining masks, and she's just as frightened by the gross distortions of the familiar, the once-trusted, as by the unknown weapons, zinging past her, flashing bright steel—

She has nowhere to hide.

Behind every door, the oblivion of space.

Something she cannot see is chasing her and up ahead, only the open door—

 _Shit_.

She forces herself awake with a hard jerk. But the aftermath of fear still echoes in her. She feels it like a sickness all through her. It twists her stomach, makes her heart pound and her limbs shake. She's hidden nearly completely beneath the fold of her sleeping bag, only a thin crevice left above her for air, but instead of pushing away the cover, she only turns carefully around so that she is facing the entrance to the tent. Still hiding, but ready for someone or something to come in. Through the thin walls, she can hear a bluster of wind through the trees, and the slow, crunching footsteps of the guard on patrol. Or whatever Bellamy's people call themselves.

She hasn't tested out, yet, if they'll listen to her, too.

Moments pass, and she orients herself in the tent, on the ground, in the dropship camp, but her muscles remain tense and her breathing hard, a pounding like her heartbeat in her ears. Whatever she was dreaming, she can't quite remember it now. But something must be still lurking in the shadows for her, because she feels it, waiting out there and watching her.

She closes her eyes tight and chants _just stop just stop just **stop**_. But nothing stops. Something faceless was chasing her to the edge of the world. She's huddled now, small and invisible in the black Earth night but whatever it was won't leave. Even watching the only entrance to the tent does not help, because all she can think of is the vastness of the forest beyond, unknowable and tangled and uneven and ancient, no match for their handful of guns and their stupid, pointless plans—

Pure fear, sourceless and primal fear, knows no reason. Clarke throws back the corner of her sleeping bag and pulls herself up, sits with her knees pressed up against her chest until she can't stand it anymore. Then she puts on her shoes and her jacket, and steps out.

Sharp night air sears her lungs. Frost cracks over the grass and frozen mud beneath her heels. For a second, she thinks the sound of it will alert the night watch to her, and she stops, animal-still, and waits.

Nothing happens.

Something inhuman moves at the edge of her vision, and she looks up sharply. But it’s no more than the swaying of the heavy branches of the trees. On the Ark, movement out of the corner of her eye almost always meant a person near her. Down on the ground, she can't shake the sense that she is being watched.

What patrolling the camp on her own was supposed to do, she isn't sure. Provide her with evidence that there are no monsters lurking in the space between the tents and the campsite wall? Make her feel real, and human, and alive again? Distract her? She rubs her palms together to generate warmth, and puffs out small clouds of cold, misty breath. Picking her way carefully among the quiet tents, past the ship, around the perimeter of the fire pit, she can at least pretend she's running from whatever was following her in the dream. Putting space between herself and it.

She's staring down at the burned-out embers of their fire, thoughtlessly, not thinking where she's going, when she runs straight into something solid and tall and almost screams.

Her heart jumps up into her throat and beats painfully against the soft skin of her neck, and she swallows down the scream so that it burns, closes her eyes as tightly as she can. She will not scream and she will not cry; she will play dead; she will play dead— She can hear the thudding of her own heart and it hurts—

The something she's bumped into puts its hands on her shoulders. She wants to fight it off, make it go. But something in the touch steadies her.

So instead she reaches out and grabs for his arms. A part of her knows who it is, even before he speaks.

"What are you doing out in the middle of the night, Princess?"

Clarke opens her eyes slowly. She can still feel hated tears burning, a few of them escaping down her cheeks as she blinks up and looks at him. The few torches they've left ablaze around the camp provide enough light for her to read the expression on Bellamy's face, if only barely: an irritating combination of annoyed and concerned. Like he wants to lecture her, but only once he's made sure that she's all right.

"Taking a walk," she says.

Bellamy sighs, his nostrils flaring, but he doesn't let go of her arms. "Taking a walk," he repeats. "In the middle of the night."

" _Yes_." She pulls herself free from his grip, takes a step back and crosses her arms against her chest. "That's allowed, isn't it?"

"If you don't mind getting shot by someone mistaking you for a Grounder."

She points her chin at the gun he's got slung over his shoulder. "You weren't exactly aiming to kill. And your guards are pretty bad at their jobs if they're letting Grounders this far into camp."

Bellamy's jaw clenches. But instead of arguing directly, he asks, again, "Why are you up?" The words are harsh enough to be an accusation, but they hit her ear like tentatively offered concern. The hesitation after them changes their meaning, perhaps, or the way his eyes search across her face, not for incriminating clues but for some sign that, beneath the defensive attitude, she's not really okay.

She's come too close to crying in front of him already. Freezing tracks of tears, nothing but the aftermath of adrenaline, are cooling against her cheeks. She wipes at them with the back of her wrist, and answers only begrudgingly, "Couldn't sleep."

He's shifting his weight between his feet. She can tell, because the small sounds of frost breaking beneath his boots sound much louder than they should in the quiet of the camp at night. And he won't look at her. So much easier, then, to watch him and the way his gaze darts about over her shoulder, how the corner of his mouth pulls in.

"Nightmares?" he asks, after a moment, like the word has been painfully pulled from him.

She nods.

"Do you want to talk—?"

"No."

He frowns, and she nearly feels guilty for the sharp snap of the word. Nearly. She can't begin to explain the formless terror of the dreams, all but the aftermath of feeling long receded from her thoughts. And even if she could, she wouldn’t want to.

But as an olive branch, anyway, she adds, "You know...how Charlotte used to have nightmares?"

Bellamy nods.

"She wasn't the only one." She sticks her hands deep in her jacket pockets, balled up into fists. "To lose a parent. Like that."

She supposes he must understand well enough: he's been there, too. A silver thread of shared experience that runs through too much of the camp. Or a heavy chain, she thinks, dragging along behind all too many of them.

And that's it, then, nothing else to say—she'll return to her tent, sit on her sleeping bag and watch the shadows through the wall, and not let herself sleep. Nothing in those shadows or the dark or the unknown will let her sleep, she's sure, till dawn, and then she'll have to get up and pretend again that she has never been scared, because that's what the others need to see from her.

Bellamy will know the truth, but that's nothing new. Every time he looks at her, it's like he's gathering some new, secret knowledge of her. Must be something in the set of his eyes or the squareness of his shoulders that makes her feel so _seen_ by him—or maybe it's just that trick he has, of being quiet and thoughtful in unexpected moments. How he's never what she assumes he will be.

Maybe she’ll force herself to stay awake by thinking about him.

Then he asks, "Do you want to go back to my tent?" and Clarke's gaze snaps to him so fast, she almost makes herself dizzy. He's still not looking at her.

He doesn't repeat the question, either.

After another moment, she asks, "Don't you have patrolling to do?"

"Just switched shifts." Then, louder and colder, so she recognizes the previous, honest tone in his voice for what it was: "It's just an offer, Clarke, if you want—"

"All right."

Anything is better than waiting out the rest of the night all alone, she tells herself, even though it's been a while now since she saw Bellamy as a rival or a threat. He reaches out to hold her hand as they circle around the fire pit again. The gesture feels sweet and gruff all at once: reluctant, in the hesitance before he presses his palm against her palm, the squeeze of his fingers around her fingers just a little too tight.

He unzips the tent door for her and she ducks in first, then steps aside just enough for him to follow her through. He stays crouched down long enough to zip the flap shut again. When he stands up straight and turns, she's right next to him in the dark, and he startles for a moment when he bumps into her.

She hears the quiet, surprised noise he makes. She can't see him, but she can feel him, warm and close.

He starts to say her name, in the same second that she reaches up, grabs his face with two cold hands, and pulls him down to her.

Without hesitation, he wraps his arms around her, too, and her body curves against his, stretches up and molds to his. Her arms curl around his shoulders and her hand presses between his shoulder blades, urging him closer still. She wants to feel him, solid and real. She wants to share breaths with him, between messy, open-mouthed kisses; she wants to taste the hot, unfamiliar inside of his mouth. She wants the distraction of him. One of his hands fists into the fabric of her jacket, the other steadying itself at her hip. He could pick her up, perhaps. And in the warmth and safety of his embrace, she would know peace.

Bellamy yanks himself away, too soon, too sharply. Even this close, and this used to the dark, she cannot see enough of his face to read him. His hand clenches around her hip. And his voice sounds ragged when he says her name.

"Clarke—"

"What? Bellamy..."

Like a plea. Like a stupid plea.

"Is this—really what you want?"

The damned hesitation in his voice, and the fear that she's misread him, and how much she hates herself because she can't untangle if she's clinging to him out of desire or fear, all burn like acid in her chest. What a ridiculous idea. Another moment of weakness, letting her emotions rule her mind again. She untangles herself from him quickly and steps away.

"Why'd you ask me over?” she asks. “Really?"

He hesitates, and she can hear the uncertainty in his voice. "Sympathy?"

She scoffs.

" _Empathy_."

The guilt of confession, and the relief, all at once, and the satisfaction of finding the right answer at last. She hears it all but doesn't try to parse it. Instead, she turns fully away from him, and her foot hits against something hard and rectangular on the ground.

Clarke bends to pick it up, and finds herself holding Bellamy's solar panel light. She flicks it on and sets it back down where it was, next to the rumpled mess of his sleeping bag. Then she kicks off her shoes and settles down. For the first time since her nightmares startled her so abruptly awake, she feels tired.

Bellamy doesn't move or speak for a long time, and when Clarke finally looks at him again, she finds him staring at her blankly, as if in a trance. Meeting her eyes seems to break it. He even manages a smile. "Planning to move in now, Princess?"

She sticks her nose up. "I was invited." She pulls her knees up toward her chest and slings her arms around them, watches Bellamy patiently as he sets down his gun and takes off his own shoes. Carefully, he sits down next to her.

"I'm surprised you don't already have a girl here," Clarke says. "Maybe even two."

"Very funny."

"Who says I’m joking?"

He glances over at her, his mouth a thin, wary line. "Judging me now?" he asks.

"No! Never!" She screws her face up into a confused, offended disbelief, but Bellamy doesn't laugh, just rolls his eyes and turns away. He isn't kicking her out, though. And in the silence that follows, all she can think is that a few moments ago, she was kissing him. The memory makes her feel, all at once, giddy and light, shocked and confused. She has, in private moments, imagined it before. But those idle thoughts are nothing compared to the real thing, and the real thing is already receding so quickly that it feels like no more than another dream, the sort of confused night shape that will mean nothing once morning comes.

"What do you do," she asks, "when you have nightmares?"

Bellamy laughs, short and dry, and looks down at his knees. Clarke thinks the sound is at her expense, until he answers, "Try to reason my way through it, usually. I re-imagine the dream and put myself in a position of power. Like I'm stronger than the monsters or the bad guys or...whoever they are."

Clarke can guess who they are.

"I don't know that that would really work for me," she says.

"Yeah, well." He shifts awkwardly, looks at the opposite tent wall, away from her. "I didn't say it was a good method."

Another silence starts to settle, during which Clarke imagines herself tracing the curve of his jaw with her fingertips.

"When Octavia couldn't sleep," Bellamy says, suddenly, and startles Clarke out of her fantasy, "I used to sit up with her and play games or tell her stories."

She has to take a moment before she can reply. Her drifting thoughts, and the earnestness of his confession, like maybe he's sharing something real with her this time, muddle and confuse her. "What sort of games?" she manages, awkwardly, at last.

"Nothing fancy. I mean, we couldn’t _buy_ anything. We were already low on rations—"

Clarke rests her hand on his knee and squeezes tight. No need to explain. The gesture seems to startle him for a moment—they are so wary with each other still—but then he relaxes into it. Even puts his hand on top of hers, crushes her fingers up between his fingers.

"We played, um, clapping games, memory games. Octavia is pretty good at those." He smiles, a certain, soft smile Clarke has never seen on him before. This is the other side of that fierce protective streak that led him to rule the camp when they first landed, the soft underside of that drive for power and control—for safety, for reassurance. Clarke looks back on those first days now and only sees his own fear. And she has sympathy.

"I bet she is," she says now, to encourage him.

But he just looks embarrassed, as if surprised that he's said even that much aloud. He clears his throat and adds, "All of that just kept her up, though. It's a good distraction, but when I wanted her to go to sleep again, I'd tell her stores. Greek and Roman myths, usually."

"Greek and Roman myths," Clarke repeats, the words rounded out with uncertain, unrealized laughter. "Why those?"

"Because they're epic stories, Clarke," he shoots back. "They have everything: gods, monsters, heroes, quests, the heavens, the underworld—"

She must still look skeptical, because he cuts himself off and just stares at her, narrow-eyed, as if waiting for her to say something he discerns on the tip of her tongue. All she wants is for him to go on, to tell her about the epic quests and the heroes and the monsters. Or just to keep talking. The words matter less than the sound of his voice and its warm, excited tenor, the tone of someone talking about something he loves.

"Okay, then," he says instead, and lets go of her hand. He stretches out, lying down on the sleeping bag with his head propped up on his arm, facing her. "How about you tell me what sort of stories you like?"

Hardly an easy question to answer. She hums thoughtfully to buy herself some time, as she shifts to lie down next to him. The sleeping bag is narrow. When she mirrors his position, she finds herself almost nose to nose with him.

He reaches out his hand and settles it easily on the curve of her hip. Clarke shifts a little closer still.

"I guess," she says, "I prefer stories about the future."

Bellamy frowns. "What does that mean?"

"You know. Stories about how things will be." The stories she's been building up, hoarding guiltily for her own worst moments, about what they could someday be. The dropship camp. The Ark survivors. Herself, maybe, and Bellamy, together.

He tugs her closer, and to keep herself steady, she slides her arm around him. His body does not feel familiar yet, but bits of memories do flare: how he had not hesitated to kiss her back, how he'd opened his mouth to hers so easily. His thumb rubs back and forth against her hip.

"So tell me one," he says.

Peace with the Grounders, somehow, someday. The tents turned into cabins. Hunting and fishing and then learning to grow their own food. Some degree of order, a trellis on which freedom can grow. The four seasons they used to read about in their history books. Nightmares that recede into the background, like the pain of the past does. The ability to start again.

She tells him these things, her nose tucked in against his chest, his arms around her to keep her close and warm. Every now and then, he makes a noise of assent, to show he is still listening. And he sounds pleased.

Maybe these won't be her dreams when she falls asleep again. But they'll be what she believes in, when the morning light shines through the walls of the tent and she wakes up, Bellamy still sleeping peacefully by her side.


End file.
